35.082-12 - Autobiography as Postfoundational Curriculum Research: Toward an Ethics of (Im)Possible Representation

• In Event: 35.082 - Roundtable Session 14

Session Type: Roundtable Session

Abstract

Autobiography – long-recognized as one major mode of curriculum theorizing and inquiry – enables curriculum researchers to reflexively examine residues of conflicted “meanings” of alterity that often get sanitized, universalized and commodified into versions of “sameness,” primarily through regulatory labels and their capacities to constitute and reify preferred school “identities.” Leaning on post-foundational theorizing that has disrupted any Enlightenment notion of a sovereign, fully conscious and autonomous self who is able to fully inquire into and narrate her unmediated “story,” this Symposium illuminates questions of ethical representation that participants claim need to be foregrounded in any current versions of autobiographical curriculum research, including what might constitute “ethical” forms of post-foundational autobiographical curriculum theorizing and inquiry within specific transnationally/locally infused contexts.

Sub Unit

• Division B - Curriculum Studies / Division B - Section 1: Critical and Post-Foundationalist Perspectives and Practices

Chair

• Janet L. Miller, Teachers College, Columbia University

Papers

• Working Autobiographically: Encountering My Ethical Responsibilities as a Researcher - Patricia Gibson, Teachers College, Columbia University

• How Am "I" Ethical When I Succeed as "They" Fail? - Lillian Sharon Leathers, Teachers College, Columbia University

• What Does It Mean to Be an Ethical Researcher Subject? Talking Back to Norms Embodying My Conflicted Subjectivities in Researching Homosexuality in Uganda - Lydia Namatende-Sakwa, Teachers College, Columbia University

• Crazy White Girls and Wiggers: Autobiography and the Conundrum of Ethically Representing the School Subject in Research - Mary Joyce Newbery, Teachers College, Columbia University